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Fight a flu pandemic by keeping people apart

During a flu pandemic, simply keeping people apart until they are vaccinated can significantly reduce the number of deaths. However, getting it right will not be easy, suggests a study of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

Martin Bootsma of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London studied data from 16 US cities that used various measures to keep people apart, including closing schools and churches. They found that one of the most important factors in minimising deaths was how long these measures were applied for. Some cities started too late, others lifted the controls too early, and “none of the cities really managed to get the perfect strength of intervention,” Bootsma says.

San Francisco was most successful, reducing mortality by 25 per cent (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI&colon; 10.1073/pnas.0610941104).